travel

A few months ago, during our spring break, me & a couple friends have decided to visit the beautiful area of South Tyrol.

Just as we were on our way, driving through these parts of Alps, we have gotten some amazing views, as the whole day was moody & the fog spread over the beautiful landscapes.

We’ve been driving through an area called Bolzano, where all of those beautiful places that you see online are located. Here are a few pictures to show you what kind of views we got from the car.

At first we had to go and stop and Lago di Braies, well obviously, it’s the most beautiful lake in Italy, I mean, in the world probably! At first we actually stopped at a small town of Villnöß, as it was on the way, but the sun rays weren’t giving us the best shots, see for yourself. I mean I managed to get some fine shots, but it was pretty difficult. But more on Villnöß later!

But now we’re here! Lago di Braies people, look at it, so beautiful!!

We didn’t choose the best time to visit Dolomites, as everything was still frozen and the wintertime still ruled these beautiful places here. Either way, I have captured some amazing shots and walked on the frozen surface of the lake, observing this breathtaking place. I was freezing the whole time by the way!

The next stop was Villnöß, as we couldn’t shoot there before. Villnöß, also called Val di Funes, is a small town located right below the Sexten Dolomites, which in my opinion are the most interesting mountains in Europe. See for yourself!

Seen this iconic church before? You did? It’s pretty famous, which doesn’t surprise me, with its location, being one of the only buildings on that hill, it gives it a really amazing atmosphere!

There’s also a larger part of the town below by the way, it does not consist purely out of one church on a hill, there’s a whole neighborhood with stores and other communal places if you walk a couple minutes down the hill.

We came to Villnöß in the afternoon, maybe around 4-5pm, and we’ve stayed there until the sunset was over, in order to capture it during the day & also during the sunset time. Do you see how amazing the sunsets are here? Holy shit!!!

When we were done with our first day here, we drove to our accommodation, which was a 15-20 minute drive from this little town. Me & my friends were staying in this cool apartment located in Lüsen, which was still in the area of Bolzano. We’ve cooked dinner & crashed in the bed as we were up since early morning.

We woke up pretty early the next day to catch the sunrise & get on with our next adventure out here. Look at that view from our apartment in the morning!

Amazing, right? I really love the moods in these mountains. And you see that house down there? Wish I had one like that!

For our next day, we all agreed we need to see as much as possible, so we’ve taken a drive to Lago di Misurina, where we grabbed lunch with a great view.

That building out there is actually a hotel. Imagine the people that work there, they work at a pretty cool location, don’t you think?

This is also a lake, which means that in Summer, all of that ice & snow that you see melts. As I said before, I guess we chose a wrong time to visit this place, but it still looked amazing.

Our original plan was to visit Tre Cime after this, these iconic rocks in Dolomites, which people have to hike up to, but sadly the path was closed due to bad weather conditions and snow (sad smiley).

I got a shot of it from a different perspective either way as we were driving back, and it still looked pretty great!

Our third and last day was great too. We packed our bags, threw it all in our car & drove to see something truly breathtaking, I swear.

I have never seen such a thing before, and I’m sure places like this are not very common anywhere, but here we are! Look at it!!

What is it? Well these are called the pyramids, actual name of these ones is Piramidi di Plata, and they’re located in an area called Perca, still very close to Bolzano. These rocks were created as a result of acid rain, that hit these mountains long time ago, creating these amazing natural wonders. There’s a few of them in the area of South Tyrol actually, so these ones are not the only ones around here.

Amazed by the colors & the views here, we’ve spent some time observing these giants and taking some shots of them. They even match the color of my shoes, don’t they?

On a drive back to Florence, we stopped at Lago di Garda, as it was on the way. Lago di Garda is actually Italy’s biggest lake, with an area of 370km², together with Lago di Como right after it. These two aren’t actually that extremely far from each other either, probably like a 2 hour drive, they are surely worth visiting!

It has such blue waters! I really fell in love with this place.

Hope you enjoyed this article! Feel free to like & share. Make sure to follow me on Instagram: @alextrajanov to see when I post another one of my blogs! More adventures coming soon, I promise guys!

Enjoy a couple more pictures of Dolomites below, and make sure to visit these mountains!

After no sleep or rest during my summer course at RISD, I’ve decided to travel somewhere for at least a week. Me and my brother have decided that we need to go to Dubai, so we booked everything, packed our bags and left.

Dubai is something else. After a 6 hour flight we were here. As we came out of the plane, the warm air made it hard for us to breathe and we started melting. Other than that, Dubai was great, I swear! Guess we chose the wrong time, but we’ll have fun and enjoy it either way.

On the first day we’ve decided to take it slow. We’ve decided to visit the Dubai Mall, which you gotta visit if you’re ever here! Later that day we went to the famous Aquarium, where we’ve had a great time.

Looks pretty cool, doesn’t it? We got the basic package which basically shows you the Aquarium tunnel & underwater zoo, but you can also book other things, such as diving, meeting the otters, and stuff like that.

After the aquarium we booked all the other activities and trips when we arrived back to our hotel.

So tomorrow we’re going to the Desert Safari, wohoo!

As I said, the activity for the next day was Desert Safari, where we rented quad bikes and rode them on the amazing desert dunes, followed by a crazy ride with our tour guide, who drove his car through even taller dunes.

After this adventure we’ve enjoyed our night at the desert camp eating good food & smoking some shisha. Such a great end of the day.

We’ve decided to take a rest after the crazy desert adventure by going to the beaches here and exploring the city a bit.

I guess beach isn’t that great of an idea in Dubai at this time of the year. We arrived to the Jumeirah Beach, where we’ve stayed just for a while & then moved to the JBR beach in the city, where they offer various activities on the water too.

The advantage of JBR is that it’s right where all the buildings in the city are, which means you can find drinks, food & other things nearby.

Excited to be at a great beach, we jumped into the water. What we expected to be a refreshing feeling was swimming in a jacuzzi like water that was probably around 38 degrees hot.

We’ve had enough of this, full of sweat, so we decided to take a ride on the donut with a crazy boat driver, who was speeding like crazy. It was real fun though!

Being tired as fuck, we went back to the hotel to rest, which ended up in sleeping & waking up the next day.

We had to wake up quite early, as we were leaving for Abu Dhabi for a day trip to the Mosque, to see the city & to see the Ferrari World.

As we were approaching the massive Mosque, I couldn’t wait to get out of the car and start taking some pictures. As I came with my ripped jeans as I always do, due to the regulations I had to dress up in the white dress that covered my clothes. Damn, it was freaking hot, I thought I was gonna melt!

The Sheikh Zayed Mosque is truly a breathtaking place to visit and get some good shots, I especially recommend it for any photographers out there! As a photographer I really enjoyed all the views.

Right after the beautiful Mosque, we drove around the city & had lunch. I caught some nice views of Abu Dhabi skyline that you can see below!

With our full stomachs (finally!), we left the beautiful hotel and drove around the city, stopping at the Ferrari World where we were about to be picked up by another truck, as we were returning back to Dubai.

On our 5th day i guess? Don’t even know which day it was anymore, got a bit lost in it. Well the next day, we’ve booked a visit to Burj Khalifa, where we would be taken up the building with the fastest elevator (it brought us to the 124th floor in a minute, amazing, isn’t it?)

We were allowed to visit two floors once we got up – the floor 124 & 125, which weren’t that different, but we got some amazing views & I got some cool shots!

Being able to see Dubai from another perspective was amazing. We were able to see different parts of the city & how they differ from each other, see below in the pictures!

Me & my brother were really excited for the last day of this amazing trip as we had the Atlantis Aquaventure waterpark booked for the whole day, together with its aquarium.

On our last day we’ve had tons of fun, enjoying all those amazing slides they got there, but I wasn’t really able to take any pictures. It really was a trip worth taking.

Thanks for reading, hope you guys enjoyed this! Feel free to share with your friends if you liked it.